Boris Johnson: how goes his 'cycle revolution'?

Boris's cycle hire scheme has been characterised crisply by the Standard's Ross Lydall. Of the third annual Travel in London report he wrote:

It provides statistical back-up for the belief that Boris bikes have become posh-boys' toys - a majority of users are white, male and earn more than £50,000 a year, with 68 per cent aged between 25 and 44.

While Johnson subsidises well-heeled cyclists, the London Mayor has decided to hike bus fares and cut bus routes across the capital. Buses are used predominantly by those on lower incomes and disproportionately by old people, children and minority groups.

Questions leap to mind. Do Boris Bikes indeed represent a Zone 1, "posh-boy" bias on the Mayor's part? Had Ken Livingstone foreseen such a customer profile when he raised the idea of a cycle hire scheme? Do the findings of the Travel in London report amount to an indictment of the most visible transport innovation of Boris's term?

Let's ponder the bigger picture. If there is, as Boris claims, a "cycle revolution" happening in London then it's one that's been underway for a decade. The report tells us (see page seven) that the number of "journey stages" cycled by Londoners is estimated to have increased by 61 percent between 2001 and 2009 having been pretty static for the previous eight years. The 2008/9 increase was five percent. Yet the context for this sustained growth is that cycling accounted for a mere two percent of all journey stages undertaken in the capital in 2009 (page 6).

Boris's policy goal is described at the top of page 225:

[H]e has set a target to deliver a 400 per cent increase (from 2001) in the number of cycle trips and a 5 per cent mode share for cycling by 2026.

Before weighing the worth of this, a word on definitions. A "journey stage" means each individual part of a complete journey, and is the unit of measurement TfL finds most useful. A "trip" means a complete journey from starting point to destination and might include several stages for which different transport modes are used, though for data-gathering purposes each trip is categorised by the mode of transport used for the largest part of it.

However, in terms of Boris's cycle pledge this difference is insignificant. The average number of trips taken in Greater London in 2009 is put at 24.4 million (page 38) and the average number of stages at 28.4 million (page 40). Cycling accounted for half a million of both totals. As for cycling's mode share throughout that year, that was two percent (page 42).

Put simply, the use of bicycles for getting around London remains tiny compared with public transport (a 41 percent modal share) and other forms of private transport (37 percent). This highlights that that 61 percent increase in "journey stages" travelled by bicycle was from a miniscule parentage base and makes Boris's targets look rather cautious.

The number of bicycle trips made in his benchmark year of 2001 was 300,000. Would a 400 percent increase to 1.2 millions trips a day by 2026 - by which time he'll have qualified for his Freedom Pass, assuming they still exist - means London is a "cyclised city"? Will a modal share increase from two to five percent? A wouldn't call that a revolution. I'd call it gradualism of a pretty gentle kind.

Still, within that sobering context the report's findings about Boris's two biggest cycling initiatives from 2010 show significant successes (read from page 225). It seems encouraging that six out of ten hire scheme users who responded to TfL's survey had only started cycling in London in the preceding three months. Likewise, despite persuasive criticisms of them aired by several readers of this blog, the report says of the two superhighways that there's been a 24 percent overall increase in "cycle flows" on the routes they follow since the Smurf blue appeared on them.

That said, switchers to the hire scheme from other modes had abandoned the Tube (35 percent) and the bus (23 percent) in far greater quantities than taxi or car (just four percent). TfL says, reasonably enough, that this is helpfully taking a little of the strain off public transport. Yet the same trend can only be adding to road congestion and shows the scheme's had little impact in wooing people out of motor vehicles.

As for the social profiles of the two schemes' customers, is it a surprise that white blokes form by far the largest group of hire bike and superhighway users? Given that both schemes are largely focussed on the centre including the City should it amaze us that 60 percent of hire scheme users and 41 percent (for CS3) and 54 percent (CS7) of superhighway users come from households with an income of over fifty grand? A household income in that bracket, as distinct from an individual's, is not in any case necessarily an indicator of great wealth. It could, for instance, describe a London couple who both earn a fairly modest £25,000 a year.

The moral of this story? Investing in cycling can get results. But at this rate the road to a truly cycle-friendly London is going to be very long and very slow.

Update, 15:28 I should add that as an ambassador for cycling Boris would be very hard to improve on.

Stephen Glaister, a transport economist at Imperial College, London (and another devoted cyclist), wonders if the scheme is aiming at the wrong problem. "There has never been a shortage of bikes in London," he says. "It's just that people are afraid to use them."